Anyone who knows me knows that I think there are a lot of bad heuristics in Scrabble. Some of them are just mathematically insubstantiable: i.e. taking away the star, blocking double-double lines as threats, or emphasizing turnover early in the game.

However, there are other old-school heuristics that I object to: not because they’re wrong, but because they’re not useful. “When you find a good play, look for a better one” is one of those heuristics. Despite the fact that it’s one of the most common pieces of advice in all of Scrabble, it’s also one of the most useless.

I realize that on the surface, this sounds like reasonable advice. After all, so many people miss good plays simply because they play too quickly. We all have moments where we made plays, hit the clock, and then soon realized we missed a better option.

It’s just not effective at helping players find plays. I strongly believe that most players don’t find enough candidate plays, but this heuristic just doesn’t help. While it’s certainly a useful observation that players overlook plays, this heuristic fails to help players improve their game for two primary reasons:

1. You can’t keep looking forever.

As played in tournaments, Scrabble has a fixed time limit, and as a result, we have to find the best play in a short period of time. As such, we need to have some metaheuristics: some subconscious rules that help us determine not just when and how to think, but also when and how to stop thinking.

In some cases, this is easy: we can find the best theoretical play that fulfills all our goals. (Certainly we’re not going to improve from a double-double or QI for 64 in most cases.) But other times, this is harder, and we have a much harder time knowing when to keep looking and how. We need a more specific set of parameters to tell us when to look and when to stop.

The best way to evaluate when to stop thinking is to determine whether you’re making progress. For example, if you have a blank on a bingo rack, are you finding new bingos that don’t play, or new “almost” possibilities? Are you running into the same obstacle over and over, indicating you should stop (such as seeing no spot available for the bingo, or the G being too big of a nuisance) or are your roadblocks changing?

A better heuristic would be “Keep looking for better possibilities until you’re no longer finding anything new.” As a general rule (and this follows outside of Scrabble as well) if you’re repeating the same thought pattern, you’ve reached a dead end. Over time, we can develop conditions and parameters on this rule, based on the amount of time left and the difficulty of the position.

2. The rule is not actionable.

While everyone has advice, sometimes advice is not useful. This is especially true throughout the self-help world. Saying something like “work smarter, not harder” or “reach for the stars” might make a good quotation, but it’s vague advice that’s very difficult to implement.

Simply saying “look for a better play” does not help you during the decision making process. While this rule describes a common problem for many players, it’s not actionable, and therefore, it’s not useful, other than in really obvious, unsophisticated ways, similar to ideas such as “Analyze your options” or “Play slower”.

While it’s clear that we make mistakes by overlooking plays, pointing this fact out isn’t the way to improve our Scrabble play or decision making. It doesn’t tell you how, where, or when to look for better plays.

A Better Way Forward

If we were to streamline this rule of thumb, we’d instead be saying something like “When you find a play, continue to look for plays until you’re convinced that you won’t find a better one.” And that is a better heuristic. But what’s really needed here isn’t a better heuristic: it’s a better guide to finding plays.

It turns out we’re better off using a multi-pronged approach to finding a better play. Play finding is a difficult process requiring several heuristics and techniques to be performed effectively. Like any heuristics or heuristic set, they need to be tailored to the individual based on their traits, habits, perspective, and biases, but here is a significantly better set of heuristics for finding plays:

1. Develop a set of criteria for evaluating plays. (It’s not always about scoring or playing a bingo on your next turn, although that’s usually what it is.)

2. Find at least one play that you’d be content making as a fallback option.

3. Once you’ve found that play, search for a minimum of 2 reasonable alternative plays, preferably in different parts of the board. For the next step, you want to have three plays in mind whenever realistically possible, so always try to generate a list of three candidate plays.

3a: Focus on plays that could hypothetically be better than your baseline. Look around the board for different options: while one spot might look the most appealing, evaluate your options in other potentially lucrative bingo lines, parallels, and scoring areas. If you can quickly rule out that a theoretically better play exists, go ahead and make your play.

3b: Remember to also look for similar plays and minor improvements to your baseline play. If you can keep an A instead of an O, or move that C to the DLS square, those improvements are meaningful.

3c: Also look for different types of plays, especially those that achieve different objectives or have different concepts. Even if a bingo exists, that’s not necessarily the best option. Remember to consider setups, fishing options, defensive plays, etc. that may not achieve the same options as your baseline play.

4. If the best play is not apparent, evaluate your plays (strategize). This obviously is easier said than done: it involves a rigorous process, and would be its own separate article.

At first, this may seem pretty daunting, but this heuristic set is simple. Your mind can perform amazing feats if you simply believe in yourself and train yourself to do so. At the end of the day, becoming better at Scrabble is like getting better at anything: it’s mostly about optimizing yourself, and teaching yourself a better way to think.

It’s also worth noting that sometimes this heuristic set can fail, but it’s okay. People don’t follow heuristics religiously. We’re not computers. To some degree, we have a basic idea of what we should do: guidelines like these just help us improve our instincts and streamline our intuition.

This is from a World Scrabble Championship game between Brett Smitheram and Nigel Richards. To be fair, Brett was fairly low on time so it’s understandable he didn’t play this correctly, but I think it’s very instructional and useful to illustrate how to play these types of games, so I created the following puzzle:

From the WSC stream: (CSW lexicon)
You’re down 4: the pool is AEEEINPS. You’re playing Nigel Richards, whose last play is TIFT. What’s your play? Why?
(Yes, there is an unequivocally best play here. It’s not close.)

Take some time to try to figure out what you’d do in the following position before reading the solution.

This is a classic one-in-the bag endgame, which for most players is very hard,. Normally, you’d have to analyze this position by playing all 8 endgames with every candidate play, such as ELF, ULTRA, TAV, VAT, etc. and this could be a total nightmare. However, this pool, provided with the last play makes this a bit easier.

Analyzing this position starts pretty easily: What do we do if we draw an E? Figuring out a win after an E draw is by far the most important priority, since we know at least one E is in the bag before TIFT (and likely 2 Es). So what can we play that wins with an E draw?

Before we answer that position, let’s look at what Nigel’s options are with this pool: in short, not a lot. PAEDO and SPEEDO are the highest scoring options, but they give back outplays against the blank, and PISHER just ruins Nigel’s racks. Nigel has some setup options if you burn the blank (PA, PIT, etc.) but the biggest threat is actually just endgame timing, with stuff such as SEEP o3 (which doubles as SPEEDO) or RESEEN.

The first play we can find that wins with an E draw is HAuLAGE. This leaves two outs with ERV, and really nothing good for Nigel: nothing he has can outrun VERA and he can’t block and score enough. since VERT still scores okay (and it’s very hard to block VERA: PAEAN just doesn’t work) Unfortunately, there’s really nothing else that wins after HAuLAGE, but this is at least a start.

The next play that wins is ULTRA, as you have VEEP next turn and the blank allows decent blocking options next turn. Unfortunately, while you can go through all of these endgames and they’re closer, they still don’t quite win either. RESEE(N) o1 and SEEP still plays parallel to ULTRA and eats you for breakfast, and even drawing the N doesn’t win you the game: in fact, the only tile that you additionally win other than the E is the S, and it’s difficult to see Nigel playing TIFT without an S.

This forces us to search for other plays with a secondary purpose: what if we can block RESEE/SEEP/etc. and also counter plays like PAEDO/SPEEDO? The first most obvious play that we can do is something like TAV, saving the blank to block the S setups. While this looks good, this just doesn’t score enough on future turns: it loses to stuff like PIT. However, there is another alternative: AXLE/AXEL 5k.

AXLE wins with the E, and in fact with all the vowels, preventing PAEDO/SPEEDO because of out plays such as AVERAGE or AGRAVIC and scoring threats such as GRAVES. Meanwhile, with any vowel you also prevent PIT/PA setups, since VASE/VISE scores too many points and allows multiple out plays. It wins with the A, E, I, and S: 6 endgames, which is even greater since it’s hard to imagine Nigel played TIFT without PNS in his rack, since playing TIFT for 7 leaving a vowel-heavy rack makes little sense. Because of this, AXLE will win overwhelmingly often in reality: over 90% of the time given Nigel’s previous play.

Hey guys! For those of you interested in following, I’ve decided to make a brief description of the players to watch in this year’s National Scrabble Championship. Enjoy!

Favorites:

Nigel Richards

He’s been untouchable in CSW lately and has by far the best long-term results of anyone in this field. He’s been experimenting a bit lately, and he’s amazingly had a pretty long drought in terms of both Nationals and Worlds, but he’s still the biggest threat in the entire tournament, and still strikes fear into any opponent he faces.

Question Marks: Has he lost a step? Does he still want to win in TWL?

Will Anderson

The defending champion, and the top seed. Renowned for his word knowledge, but very solid strategically, he’s definitely a top threat to win.

Question Marks: Hasn’t been playing a lot lately. Will Will’s recent affinity to Collins detract from his ability to remember TWL? Are people going to have a better game plan against Will since he’s the defending champion?

Mack Meller

Probably the sentimental favorite to win the tournament, as Mack’s just finish his freshman year at Columbia University, and many of us remember Mack from his days as an innocent School Scrabble player. Likely the best word knowledge in the entire tournament, Mack’s fast speed and extremely aggressive play style combine with his youth and stamina will make him a force to be reckoned with.

Question Marks: Expectations for Mack have never been higher, as his past results make him the crowd favorite, and his prior finishes of 7-7-3-2 naturally lead to only one finish to continue the pattern.

Strong contenders:

Matthew Tunnicliffe

Champion in 2015. Hasn’t been playing much lately and had a rough previous tournament, which will likely just add fuel to his fire. That being said, he’s still a significant threat to win and has just the type of well-rounded toolset needed to win this championship.

Rafi Stern

Rafi hasn’t played many tournaments as of late, spending most of the last year in Israel. When Rafi’s on point, he’s one of the strongest and scariest players in the field, and can go an entire day without making major errors. Rafi has an extremely strong technical understanding of Scrabble, capable of playing various styles and adjusting his style based on the situation.

Ian Weinstein

After many years of middling Nationals results, Ian’s finished 2nd and 4th in the last two years, and significantly leveled up his game. Known for his dominance of Florida for over 2 decades, Ian combined a highly offense style with his experience in playing out of difficult situations, yet somehow despite all this, he’s flown under the radar. Will this be his year?

Orry Swift

While he might not have the same name recognition, Orry has been recently trying to rededicate himself to Scrabble, and has one of the most strategic and analytical minds in the game, with the ability to be a winning player at games such as poker and Magic in addition to Scrabble. Even though he has some tough matchups, he still has some of the best results of any player in the field.

Joel Sherman

Infamous for his depiction in the hit book Word Freak, the former National Champion has a setup-heavy style that plays well in the current metagame, and has been in strong contention for most of the recent Nationals. Can he finally break through?

Joey Krafchick

After a brief foray into Collins, Joey’s back to TWL and has refocused his efforts on studying, flying up the rating charts in recent years after winning a handful of touranemnts. Joey also tends to cram studying in before Nationals. Can he manage to overcome his head-to-head struggles against other, tactical top players?

Jason Li

Jason’s probably the most unknown of the contenders who can win Nationals, making him a likely candidate to sneak up out of nowhere, although he was in strong contention at Buffalo in 2014. Perhaps one of the most analytical players out there, and recently reaching a new peak rating. Can he finally break through and win in a major Division 1 field?

Eric Tran

Recent winner of the Canadian Scrabble Championship, Eric like Orry has amazing game acumen, and is also an amazing poker player. Amazingly, Eric’s never finished in the top 20 in the Nationals, but recent evidence shows that he can be a major contender. Will he be able to conquer America in addition to Canada?

Jackson Smylie

Jackson’s another player who has been skyrocketing up the ranks, and leads in Division 1 tournament wins as well as multi-day wins. Can he catapult his way to winning this years Nationals?

Scott Appel:

After a few year slump, Scott’s finally starting to regain his form with a strong performance in Atlanta, not to mention numerous BAT premiers and four top 10s at prior Nationals. While he doesn’t have the name recognition or overwhelming personality of the other top players, he’s still a major threat to win.

Joe Edley

By far the most decorated Nationals player in the field, with 3 titles and many other 2nd and 3rd place finishes, not to mention countless other tournaments and over $100,000 in career earnings. While he finished 6th in 2016, he hasn’t finished in the top 10 before then since 2005. Does he still have what it takes to win?

As many of you know, Words with Friend uses ENABLE, which bears a lot of similarity to OWL 2.1 or the 4th edition of Merriam-Webster. (This means that new Scrabble words are not words.) However, there are some important differences.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get all of the names, but here are some of the notable plays I saw:

In Division E, I see a series of 4 boards in a row that all have at least 3 bingos on them. Who said lower divisions were full of staircases?

Christina Damron has won a game in round 10, meaning that every player throughout the entire field has won at least one game at this point! Christina hasn’t won a lot of games over her tournament history, but she still keeps on playing!

In Division D, one board had CONNIVED through an E with CDINNOV and TYRANNY above it through a T: some pretty good way of getting rid of some letters!

I see another board with a whole medley of cool longer words mid-game, including AIRFIELD, EBOOK, JOISTER* TASTIER, and QUACKED.

Not all the words are acceptable, though, as I see the phoney FARTIEsT* on another board 🙂

I see another nice bingo: someone has found the word in DEFILER. It’s FLUORIDE!

In Division C, someone played a nice 5-tile overlap of AVIATOR over FLOWERS, scoring 81 points!

I see a slew of blanks used to get rid of some ugly racks for bingos. Art Moore played Nancee Mancel and I see MURKIlY on the board, while I see TWEEZInG on another board.

In a game between Art Moore and Judy Newhouse, I see the word CEIINU? on the board! It’s a common word… can you find it?

On Judy Horn’s board (the tournament organizer!), I see she’s played the word MAHARAJa. After the game, Judy comes up to me and shows me she also playing BADINAGE as a triple triple through that blank A!

In Division B, I saw a really nice bingo of PEEKAbOo on the TWS for 89!

The attack of the duplicate words in division B has happened for the third time, as earlier it was UNEXCITED, then MINIVANS, and this round I see OVERNEW happen multiple times: a bit weird especially it has an anagram (REWOVEN)

Connie Creed has just tried HOTPANTS*. Frank Tangredi challenges it off immediately, as another player in the division starts laughing. Later on another board with anonymous players I see the word YOUZA*: although words like YOWIE/ZOWEE/ZOOKS are word, there’s unfortunately no YOUZA.

In a game between tournament leader Ken Kasney and Jeffrey Nelson, I see MUZJiK for 105 to a Triple Word! MUZJIK is known as the highest scoring 7 letter word on the opening rack, and has a ton of variant spellings, but it’s an extreme rarity to see it actually played!

In DIvision 1, Joey Mallick has finally won his first game! It’s been a rough go for Joey as the top seed of the top division, but I think everyone’s relieved that variance has finally begun to subside for Joey. Joey wins a second game, and a third, and a fourth, and is playing spoiler, as he will continue to play contenders for the next few rounds.

Joel Sherman calls me over and tells me he’s played EPONYMIC with a blank twice this tournament. Very rare!

Between Joe Edley and Chris Kulig, I see the obscure word bOBECHES on the board. Tough find! In another game I see the weird word FaRTLEK, which is a Swedish training technique for runners.

In the CSW division, I see two boards next to each other, each with triple-triple blank bingos!

On another board between Sam K and Chris Sinacola, I see the word TOETOES. It’s a Maori grass: an alternate spelling of TOITOIS. There’s a few similar words to this, such as PIOPIOS, MOOLOO, GOOROO, and HOOROO!

In a game between Dan Milton and Lynda Woods Cleary, I see the word UNAVAILING: a ten letter word!

Current standings with 2 rounds left:

In Division A, Joey Krafchick and Cesar del Solar are the only two in contention, with Joey having a small lead.

In Division B, 5 people are still in it, but Joel Horn is leading by a game over Ricky Sirois and Ken Kasney.

In Division C, Yvonne Lobo is leading by a game and spread and looks to be in a great position to win.

In Division D, it’s a two-horse rase between Steve Sikorski and Marvin Kraus, with Marvin holding a slim spread lead.

In Division E, Emmanuel Aronie has a 1 game lead over Harolyn Mayer.

In CSW, it’s a 3 horse race between Jacob Bergmann, Sam Kantimathi, and Jason Broersma, who are 10-2, 10-2, and 9-3 respectively. Good luck to the contending players!

I’m talking to Cesar del Solar, division 1 player, who has ceremoniously blown another game to Karl Higby, a player rated over 2000. He’s complaining about how badly he’s playing. He’s currently in first place. Scrabblers 🙂 Cesar also noted he won a game when his opponent mis-tracked and let him play a 107 point out bingo to win by 10.

I see a game with ENNASES* on it in Division 1. It stayed. Everyone makes mistakes 🙂

Bradley Robbins in Division 2 has played OXIDIZE for 85 with the X and Z. You don’t see that every day!

Wes Eddings got to play NOSEDIVE from an N, parallelling three letters in the *middle* of the word: the E, D, and I, paralleling TO/EL/RE to make TOE/ELD/REI. I later saw a game against Ben Schoenbrun which he won that had a lot of cool words, including TOEpIECE and ARPEGGIO.

In another round, I see a game between Bradley Robbins and Carol McDonald, I see the word UNEXCITED. In the same division just across from them, I see a game between Jeffrey Nelson and Frank Tangredi also with the word UNEXCITED!

News has come out that someone played a bingo, but it was in the wrong spot: they could have triple-tripled! Names have been omitted to protect the innocent.

Joel Sherman’s played a 9: OBVERSION, against Chris Kulig. Not every day do you see one of those!

In the bottom division, I see Stella Russell play MANAgES for 92 points, hooking FINERS, and her opponent, Harolyn Mayer, instantly challenges! FINER looks like it can be a noun, and there have been several 1900+ players who have played it as a phoney and had it accepted, but not today!

Chris Sinacola played HEREdES for 120 points, with the first H and E as a parallel as well as the S hooking PUNNET-S.

James Krycka in the bottom division found the only bingo in HLOOPS? which is very impressive: I guess that’s what all the hoopla was about.

There’ve been some very weird standings today. After three rounds in Division A, there was only one player who was not either 2-1 or 1-2, and it was the top seed (who has had a very rough tournament so far). After 5 rounds in division B, last place was 2-3 -280, yes 2nd place was 3-2! Some tight divisions early on, even in a 14 player field.

Margo Kuno has won the Judy prize! She might be having a tough tournament, but she used a blank to capture the award, so she definitely will get her moment of glory at the award ceremony tomorrow!

The highlight for me so far has to be by Colleen Shea in division D, who found AEERRTW? through a T in the 6th spot as a triple triple! The word was ThWARTER for 149 points: an incredibly difficult find especially considering the blank and the awkward ThW ordering of letters.

New position: You’re up 20 with EFGIINS. What’s the best play?
Last play: QUBIT
Pool is AAACEEEEEEHNNOOORRRTUUZ

In this position, there are quite a few options: FIFE 11b (31), FEIGNS 1d (44), FILING 13i (28), as well as numerous fishing plays (DIF, FIB, FIG, and others). You can also find a list of all the words you can create with your tiles with a Scrabble word finder. Since you are ahead, you probably don’t want to select any of the fishing plays. They don’t score very well, and while they do hit some bingos, they also give away a fairly high number of bingos, and the reality of the situation is that FIFE is just a much better version of all of them. EGINS is really not a better leave than GINS with this pool, and the extra points of FIFE just really outclasses all of the other fishing plays.

FEIGNS seems to be the thematic play: it closes the blatantly obvious and dangerous row 1, which can be used for scoring and bingos, and scores the most points, potentially even outrunning several bingo options. However, when we look a little deeper, we find this decision to be a bit deceiving. First off, when we look at the tiles in the pool, we discover that row 1 isn’t as good as it first appears, as there really aren’t that many tiles that play in that spot, and thus, not that many bingos fit there either.

Sure, there are some Z plays that go there, but they are only so threatening, especially since we have no way to know they have the Z, and we’ll still be a tempo ahead with endgame timing, an even score, and an S in hand. Sure, there are -ATE bingos, and a few -NT bingos, but other than that, there’s really not a lot that goes in row 1. In fact, when we look at the bingo percentage, we’ll find that FEIGNS doesn’t really do much to stop our opponent from playing a bingo, even in comparison to FIFE:

In addition, although we’ve blocked row 1, we’ve created new bingo lanes that will allow our opponent to fish for bingos even if they missed, and while not all of these bingos win for your opponent, more than enough of them will prove to be a problem. Thus, FEIGNS might be a weaker play that it first appears; there aren’t a large number of threats available.

FILING creates a case S-hook which appears very attractive, although it’s not an incredibly useful hook. Since your goal with FILING is to maintain a lead, you’re not likely to use the S next turn unless you have a balanced scoring rack: a rack that is very likely to win anyway. FILING-S does allow you to counteract an opponent’s bingo, but the vast majority of your wins will come from preventing bingos rather than getting a counter-score or bingo yourself.

However, FILING does have one primary benefit: it blocks more bingos than any other play, both in the short and long run. While columns n and o are not usually threatening, they are threatening in this pool, since row 1 is so weak and the number of vowels make bingos beginning with vowels (or using the T in column o) more likely.

In addition, FILING segregates all of the bingo options into the top left quadrant of the board, making it difficult for your opponent to bingo on future turns. When your opponent does not have a bingo after FILING, they have much worse options: opening another bingo line is difficult and often impractical, and trying to hit one of the alternative bingo lines is extremely difficult. After FEIGNS, they have the option of hitting whatever remains open between columns d and e (or whatever they open on the left side of the board) as well as columns n and o for bingos: discreet bingo lines that cannot be opened simultaneously. This makes FILING a much stronger defensive option than FEIGNS.

Even if the bingo does come down next turn, the game becomes something near a coin flip, because of the potential of column o for big Z plays and bingos. The Z has a lot of potential for ~60 point plays in column o which is quite difficult to block, and FILINGS increases your bingo potential immensely in such a way that you can compete with your opponent by fishing for bingos both in column o and elsewhere on the board, especially as any opponent’s bingo in row 1 will open new bingo lines and space. For these reasons, FILING is a better play than FEIGNS.

A side by side breakdown of FILING vs. FEIGNS in terms of board potential

Finally, we need to compare FILING to FIFE. And it’s close. FIFE clearly results in more bingos for your opponent, but gives you much better options to outrun those bingos. It can outrun your opponent with most Z draws, as your opponent has no firepower after a bingo and a really limited pool.

Despite this board, bingos also occur very, very often: around half of the time. When they don’t occur, you’ll often get another chance, and another, and another. Columns n and o are strong bingo lines as well as the obvious row 1, and even if row 1 is used for an opponent’s bingo, it will create other bingo lines you can use on future turns. Fishing plays also score well, and EGINS scores well enough on the board that a tile like the H can let you abandon ship and outrun most bingos, or score 25 points while still maintaining both scoring and maintaining bingo chances.

Even without a bingo, there are plenty of ways to create new opportunities for future bingos. It’s easy to create an S hook in column o, any bingo in row 1 should allow you to open column a or b, etc. And of course, there’s the overwhelming likelihood that your opponent never gets a bingo down in the first place.

About 60% of the time, we either draw the Z or play a bingo. Thus, we only need to think about what to do the other 40% of the time.

After FILING, we can approximate that we’re just over 90% favorites. About 7% of the time we encounter a bingo immediately or some other devastating play and we’re underdogs, but we’ll still win about 3/7 of those games. Another 2% of the time or so they don’t hit something immediately, but we try to block row 1 and they somehow hit some other big play to win the game. Another 4% of the time we play FILING but we get outrun: either because we draw almost exclusively vowels or because our opponent gets a Z play and balanced racks: while a 48 point lead is safe, it’s not ironclad.

FIFE almost never gets outrun (even Z plays are going to have trouble) so it’s merely an analysis of how often our opponent is going to bingo while we don’t. Since we still win some of the time that the opponent bingos and we don’t, we can thus round and say that we’ll bingo about half of the time next turn, and of the times we don’t bingo next turn, we’ll bingo about half of the time the turn after.

Between this turn and next turn, our opponent should bingo about 20-25% of the time. Our opponent will bingo more often with an additional turn to improve their rack. Of that, about 70-75% of the time, we’ll draw a bingo ourselves. Even if we take the lower half of each scenario (25% and 70%) that still leaves us as a 92.5% favorite after FIFE.

It’s for this reason that I think FIFE is the best play. Even if you tweak the numbers a bit, it’s very hard to get past this conclusion: FILING has a lot of ground to make up, so either FIFE must be worse than ~92.5% or FILING must be better than 91%, and it seems unlikely to me that either is the case in this situation.

You might be wondering: “Okay, so what can I take away from this situation?” Here are the main takeaways:

1. Themes are themes but they need to be ignored from time to time.

2. Especially in CSW, a lot of times you really just need to take the points and leave over the defense. Outrunning is usually better than blocking except for some pretty unique circumstances or unless the sacrifice in points and leave is small.

3. It’s important to look at pools. While row 1 looks immensely dangerous, it’s not because of this pool.

As many of here has guessed, the play is YID for the reasons most of you have mentioned. I’ll briefly go over some things people have said:

The problem with DOPY is that it just gets blocked too often, due to row 7 overlaps, ADO/ADD (which happens more often) or bingos using the A or RAGA/GAGA/SAGA etc. EIZ is not a shoo-in to hit that spot, and DOPY just looks way too suspicious that any bingo that can block almost certainly will. EIZ is also substantially weaker than EOPZ, both in this position and just in general, and sacrificing 2 points isn’t ideal either.

PYOID is fine and is probably good against a random range. It gets a lot of cheap 35-40 point Z plays without leaving too much, but it also lets players bingo for free after a strongly ranges play (AGA). Against a random range PYOID is much stronger, but YID often is free since opponent will need to choose bingos, making them more averse to blocking, and thus strengthening the value of the setup. If the game instead started with your opponent exchanging 7 tiles after AGA, PYOID would be a much more reasonable play, but their range allows them to more effectively counter PYOID than YID.

As undesirable as it may seem, this is not a good position for you. At all. Your opponent has a bingo a very large percentage of the time between NEWSROOM and WORMSEED, especially given the implication after YAKS. Finding a bingo you can hit yourself is going to be tough, as fishing plays don’t score, your bingo will often be blocked, and with some plays you might even get outrun without a bingo. It turns out there’s no play that even wins half of the time here.

While 2 Es are more likely than 2 Os for your opponent, against a world class opponent, you still have to play ANTELOPE. First off, many of those racks that form WORMSEED form bingos on the left side of the board, such as NOWhERES, StEMWARE, and NEWSROoM, among others, so blocking is not going to do you much good. Second, ANTELOPE actually outruns WORmSEED by a point, and while RoSEWOOD does hit, it’s very hard to win against that rack as is. While this play only wins between about 3/8 of the time, you’re not going to find another play that wins more often mathematically against optimal play.

However, against players who are not experienced against clever play, and players who aren’t going to figure out your entire rack, there is another option: passing. Passing poses a litany of problems to your opponent with the vast majority of their racks if they are not knowledgeable about your rack. It will allow you to outrun WORMSEED, ROSEWoOD, and NEWSROOM if they are immediately played, while also counteracting most one tile plays (especially since most one tile plays will use the M or W). While there are a few racks it will inevitably backfire against (ShOWERED for example is devastating), it will do very well against most players most of the time.

Now, you might be asking, why doesn’t this work against top players? Well, the main reason this doesn’t work is because top players may be able to figure out your exact rack. Especially since the pool is likely to have an O/E in it, and often another ugly letter (such as another O/E, W, etc.) top players can often deduce what you might have and react optimally. Even if they don’t figure it out exactly, they are far more likely to make a play that’s unexpected and does fairly well against a gambit such as this.

Nevertheless, I’ve found that plays like this work against unsuspecting opponents a lot. It’s important to remember that even though a play is exploitable, that doesn’t mean your opponent will exploit it: they don’t know what you have or why you’re doing what you’re doing. Yes, there’s a good chance that this play might backfire. But at the end of the day, you’re in a losing position where you’re gonna lose more times than you’re going to win, and even if this gambit works half of the time, it’s still going to result in more wins than any other play.

In this case, the best solution is BY o2, setting up IXIA. While your opponent can block, doing so completely cripples their rack, allowing you to go out in two. In this situation, your opponent is best off trying to block with BYTE, allowing you to play RIA a8 and XI. The optimal route is BY o2/BYTE o2/RIA a8/BEE o1/XI k10, resulting in a route of BY = (21 – 10 + 12 – 18 + 31 + 4 = 40).

In this case, the best solution is BY o2, setting up IXIA. Your opponent’s best counter is making a setup of their own: EE h2, setting up BURET. The optimal route is thus BY o2/EE h2/IXIA 1l/BURET 1d: BY = (21 – 5 + 60 – 39 – 2 = 35)

So I get it. You’re on a budget, and books are expensive, and there are so many books you can buy. Which book is the best bang for your buck? As always, the answer is: it depends.

There are two different questions you need to ask yourself.

The first question is your country of residence. Players within the United States and Canada play using the OWL dictionary, while players in the rest of the world use the CSW dictionary.

The second question is your current skill level. Within each lexicon, I’ve written two books.

The first book is dedicated to the fundamentals of Scrabble. This book describes basic techniques that are useful if one wants to win, whether you’re playing casually, with other students, or in the lower division of a tournament. While this book covers the fundamentals, the content is not simplistic: it contains information useful for even the best players.

The second book is dedicated to understanding upper level tournament Scrabble. This book focuses more on technical information and adjustments that you need to make to succeed in tournaments. It focuses on the adjustments necessary based on the score, leave, and board positioning if you want to succeed at tournament Scrabble.

North American school or casual players should read Breaking the Game. This book focuses on fundamental OWL strategy.

North American tournament players should read Words of Wisdom, which focuses on high-level OWL strategy.

International school or casual players should read Word. This book focuses on fundamental CSW strategy.

International tournament players should read Words of Wisdom, which focuses on high-level CSW strategy.

While they don’t show up too often, extensions are one of the more interesting and “cool” components of Scrabble. Players like the aspect of playing long words, and associate a link between word length and stronger anagramming skill and vocabulary.

Sadly, in most cases, extensions are not worth the effort. Usually, extensions don’t score enough points and provide too much counterplay to be considered. However, one common exception is extensions to the opening rack, since these extensions often use the TWS square. Opening rack extensions can often be worth 50 points or more, making these plays worthwhile.

That being said, while extensions are often sweet, lucrative plays when drawn, that does *not* mean that you should fish for them, even if your fishing play has a high likelihood of success. The reason is that extensions just don’t have enough upside. Even if an extension scores, say, 54 points, that’s often just 15-20 points higher than an average turn.

And that’s assuming your opponent doesn’t block, doesn’t make an equivalent setup of their own (setups are a great way to counter extensions fishing) doesn’t make an extension themselves (they have first dibs), AND that you draw your extension (without drawing a better play). When you take all of these things into account, it means that sacrificing a significant amount for an extension is not worth it.

Fishing for extensions, just like fishing for bingos is a bad play unless you have a high likelihood of success and are sacrificing an extremely small amount to do so, and there really aren’t many better options. To illustrate why, let’s take a look at some examples of racks that some experts might choose to fish with, and why doing so is generally a bad idea.

The first thing that you need to do is estimate a worth of extensions. The approximate worth of an extension can be determined by the formula:

So for example, let’s say you’re looking at playing OXID at 8h keeping DIZ. This will inevitably be either blocked or taken quite often: let’s say 70% of the time, and you’ll draw the E about 40% of the time, so approximately 12% of the time you’ll get to play OXIDIZED next turn. OXIDIZED scores 81 points, the average score is about 39 after OXID, and the worth of the leave is 4, so 0.12(81 – 39 – 4) = ~ 4, meaning that the worth of the extension in that case is about 4 points.

On the opening rack, this ‘Score of extension’ number is often somewhere around 36, although it should be adjusted based on the things that you are opening immediately. On other boards, you may have to adjust the number based on the tiles remaining and openness of the board.

Unwarranted Extensions

As you can see, most extensions really aren’t worth very much. In addition, there are usually many ways that extensions can lose value: they can be used or blocked, or your opponent can make other setups somewhat freely. Let’s take a look at some examples of situations where people might play an extension but it is not warranted:

EIIPRSZ (ZIP vs. PRIZE)

Here, you’re drawing to 6 tiles in the bag for MISPRIZE/DISPRIZE, which you will hit approximately 25-30% of the time. This will only be occasionally blocked. That being said, this effect is somewhat small: both plays score about 20-25 more points in average, so the extension is worth about 6 points.

However, this play does have some severe downsides. First of all, PRIZE gives your opponent much better options than ZIP for scoring, resulting in a reduction of 7 or 8 points next turn.

Second of all, you’re severely limiting your bingo potential severely by keeping IS instead of EIRS. This is substantial, especially since bingos will score more than extensions will score next turn. This alone mitigates the potential upside in drawing an extension and then some, since you’re likely to bingo an additional 15% next turn and an additional 10% the turn after. (That alone is worth about 12 points)

When you add in smaller factors (your opponent might extend the word, block DISPRIZE with PRIZER, board shape, etc.) ZIP is a significantly stronger play than PRIZE.

DEHNOWY (HOWDY vs. HONEY)

Here, you are drawing 5 tiles drying to hit an E for HONEYDEW, which will happen about 45% of the time. This adds about 15 points to the expected score, so that’s about 7 more points, so the extension doesn’t even make up the difference in score between HOWDY and HONEY, not to mention the difference in leave or defense, both of which are substantial.

ENNPSXY (PENNY 8d vs. PYX)

In this case, you are giving yourself 5 chances to draw an I, which will happen about 35% of the time. This gives you a play that’s about 25 points higher than average, but since you have the X and S, that amount is narrowed to closer to 12, giving the setup about a 4 point edge, which is honestly about the same as PENNY 8h (+2 and the EX setup). Meanwhile, PYX scores 4 more (negating the setup) but also has massive defensive value (approximately 8 points) while keeping a decent leave (ENNS is about -3 to SX) making PYX a stronger play.

BGIIMNX (MIXING 8c vs. MIXING 8d/8g)

In this case, you are considering sacrificing 4 points to hit the BEMIXING extension. You’re over 50% to draw the E, and BEMIXING scores 60 points, so if it was never blocked, it would definitely be worth it.

The problem is that BEMIXING gets blocked occasionally by overlaps, but more importantly it frequently just gets taken by your opponent first, with extensions such as AD, RE, UN, BE, and IM. This happens over 1/3 of the time, and scores over 50 points, leading to a huge increase in opponent’s score, making the 8c position completely impractical.

KOORRVW (VROW vs. WORK)

In this case, your options are mediocre. On the one hand, you have WORK which scores 22 but keeps ORV, but the other option scores 20 and keeps KOR.

WORK will hit an E fairly often: about 40% of the time. Your opponent has a myriad of extensions, that will hit about 20% of the time, but also will block a decent percentage of the time with parallels over WO: not too often, but more than usual in marginal situations. In addition, your opponent can also make setups in this position, since they know that you have three tiles that are kind of confined to the setup, and that strongly negatively affects your play. (In CSW, they also have AWORK#, completely ruining any semblance of a reasonable position). Each of these factors is only worth a few points, but combined, they accumulate to be more significant than the OVERWORK extension.

Warranted Extensions

While most extensions are not worth fishing for, some definitely are, and they are a factor that can sometimes tip the scale when choosing between two close plays. Let’s now take a look at when opening rack extensions *are* worth fishing for. As you can see, opening rack extensions are only worth while when the sacrifice is extremely small and/or the reward is overwhelming.

ACGINTX (ACTING vs. TAXING)

This is a small sacrifice, since TAXING is 8 more but keeps a slightly worse leave. You’re around 50% to hit EXACTING, the A also gives you AX plays if ACTING is blocked, and it rarely will be, and even if blocked, you’re still going to have an X. The setup is worth about 10-11 points, so the 8 point sacrifice is just barely worth it.

CCKMNOS (COCK 8g vs. COCK 8h)

COCKSMAN/COCKSMEN scores 57 points and is extremely likely to be drawn, allowing you to hit over 60% of the time, giving you about a 10 point increase, but since it uses the S, it’s closer to only a 5 point increase, since the average is about 45 with S plays. In this case, your sacrifice isn’t actually in points, but defense, especially the Y hook, and there’s only 2 Ys in the bag. (COCKS still gives you COCKSM_N). While this is significant and Y plays score a lot, it’s not enough to compensate for the potential upside in setup.

CENOSTZ (COZ vs. ZONES)

In this case, while you’re giving up bingo potential, you’re maintaining the C which is such a valuable tile for extensions to ZONES (ECOTONES, CANZONES, and CALZONES) and scoring an additional 18 points. On future turns you can keep the Z, and the OZONES hook actually helps you get ECOZONES down, which makes the extension even more lucrative, making it very likely that you’re going to get a 50+ point play with the C in addition to the additional 18 points this turn. This pushes ZONES to be a slightly better play than COZ, but even still it’s only by a few points. In this case, the worth of the extension is more valuable, since it’s likely to be recurring.

EGINNNX (EXING 8d vs. EXING 8h)

In this case, you’re only sacrificing a meager 2 points for the prospect of an A draw, which will happen over 1/3 of the time for ANNEXING. Although this isn’t a huge factor, it outweighs the 2 points that you are sacrificing.

DGIIITZ (ZITI vs. DIGIT)

In this case, DIGIT is a strong play not just because of the DIGITIZE extension, which you are likely to draw, but also because of ZIG for 33 as a strong backup play, clearing the rack. Thus, it’s not only the extension that is appealing: you also have a secondary option in addition to the prospects of the 5 tile draw. Although the extension is only worth 5 or so points, when you add in the ZIG possibility it overtakes ZITI as a potential option.

Hopefully, this guide will serve as a template for helping players understand when they should and should not play extensions, especially on the opening rack.

Post 1:

You’re in a close game with one of the best players in the world. Your rack is BEEMOTY. You’re down 281-291, and your opponent has just taken 2 minutes and then played WO 14b for 10 points. Your last play was HAO, and before that, they exchanged 6. The pool is AAABCDDEEEEFFJLLLNNOORRRUUVXY. What is your play? I’ve attached a GCG: Feel free to use Quackle if you want, but again, please do not use Championship Player.

There are two lessons to be learned from this rack: how to reevaluate your leave values, and how to react to a bizarre play from a strong opponent.

Let’s start off with the basic analysis of the position. You’re down 10 points with a strong rack. The T and Y are both very strong tiles, and against a random rack, you’re easily the favorite. The Y is probably worth about 8 points here, while the T is probably worth between 15 and 20. Both a14 and n10 are very lucrative, but more importantly, both spots are probably going to stay open. The Y is a guaranteed 35, but can potentially score anywhere from 40-60 points! Saving one or both of these tiles (especially the T) can be extremely lucrative on future turns.

Based on this analysis alone, you should probably be favoring YEP, although plays like BYTE and MOTE are reasonable. Based on pure equity and potential, I think YEP is going to result in the best spread and point differential over the next few turns, against a random rack and a random player.

How does WO fit into this equation, especially given the fact that it was played by a top player? It’s very difficult for any player to figure out what is going on from an x6 followed by WO here, but let’s analyze some of the potential reasons that someone might play WO, and how that affects potential options:

1. WO is a diversion for an existing bingo line or scoring spot. WO is made to protect something already on the board. In this case, we should lean towards playing elsewhere outside of the bottom left, especially potentially lucrative spots such as columns g and h.

2. WO is a bait designed to draw out the T that could block a future bingo or scoring spot. This is a further reason to distance yourself from column a plays.

3. Opponent has concluded that you rarely have a T. In this case, you should further the story and not play the T: that spot is very likely to remain open if this is the case.

You should avoid: especially BYTE. You should *really* want to keep the T both because of an increased adjusted valuation and because there is a more than reasonable alternative in YEP. I’d suggest that players only play the T here if it has the highest valuation by a very large margin: probably over 25 points in equity for all of the reasons listed.

You can certainly consider other plays: however, I just don’t think we have enough information. Any good blocking play just gives up over 15 points in valuation, and often gives our opponent a decent scoring option back some of the time, and I just don’t think that trade is worth it most of the time. If your opponent keeps fishing, THEN start blocking, but we’re not in a favorable enough position to block what look to be fairly unlikely bingo lines at this point.

Remember, we are losing the game: if the opponent is going to draw well enough to hit a fish or a play they didn’t already have last turn, we probably weren’t going to win this game anyway, and making a blocking play means we are small favorites even if we managed to block a potential bingo or high scoring play opportunity. YEP scores significantly more points than anything else that doesn’t use the T, and most of the other options don’t block well either, and therefore, I think it should be the preferred play.

As for what our opponent has after WO? Well, you’ll have to wait for a new position on that one… stay tuned for part 3!

Post 2:

First, if you have not done so, please look at part 1 of this series below (as that is extremely relevant to this position) and make your play selection! Again, while the lessons in these diagrams are geared towards experts, the themes and strategy can also be understood by lower rated players.After YEP has been played, you seem to be in good shape. You’re now up and you’ve got the T for TWO, and you’re sweating a bingo from the I. Your opponent doesn’t bingo. Then, in another plot twist, your top player decides to make another baffling move, blocking the I, and making another T setup!

Score: 316-302

Pool: AAABCDDEEEEFJLLLNNOORUUXY

Last plays: [Opponent exchanged 6, you played HAO, opponent played WO, you played YEP, opponent played REF 14i (11)]

What’s your play? In this position, please also indicate which spot, as many of the candidate options has multiple placements at this point. Again, please don’t consult Championship Player. Results will come on a future post (after Post 3). Thanks!

Position 3: What do you play?

Rack: DFFJLRW
Score: 281-281 Last play was HAO.
Pool: AAABBCDEEEEEELLMNNOOORRTUUVXYY

Assume your opponent is rated somewhere between 6-600 in the world.Please state your reasoning 🙂 There are actually numerous options available here, but I think we’re about to uncover something fairly interesting here…

Here, you’re not in a particularly good position with a tied score and a vowel-less rack. High valuation plays such as JO 14b and SWARF b6 don’t do very well: they keep a weak leave and don’t score particularly well. Quackle valuation has you winning less than 60% of the time after either option, especially after a fairly balanced range from your opponent (HAO).

However, there is an opportunity to increase your win percentage with a lower valuation setup that is very difficult to block: OF k13, setting up the OF-F hook. (Yes, there are other options, and we’ll get there later.) With an O or E, you can draw FJORD/FJELD next turn for over 80 points, giving you a stranglehold on this game.

Of course, in addition to the low valuation and undesirable entropy, there are two downsides to this play. The first downside is that you don’t yet have either FJELD or FJORD, and you need to draw them. While this might happen next turn, it might take several turns to draw one of these letters, and in the meantime your rack is completely hamstrung, relegated to low scoring options and likely falling slightly behind. You might need to exchange next turn or (more likely) a low scoring play using the W, committing to fishing for 15k monsters.

The second problem is that there is one (and only one) way to block this setup: the T. Since OF is an immediate setup, it is fairly obvious to your opponent that you have a big play (or will draw one soon) that uses that spot, so your opponent will always block with the T unless they have a huge play (like a bingo).

In many cases, T plays along row 5 will score 25 or more points, giving them a huge leave and leaving you with a huge potential of a vowel-less rack. And even if they don’t have the T yet, you often haven’t drawn a play in column 15 either: they can always draw the T on future turns.

If we are just looking at the next turn, these two factors alone make OF not worth it. You’re not going to get to play on row 15 often enough, and it gets blocked too often. However, there’s another factor we’re not considering here: recursion.

Approximately 3/4 of the time, your opponent is not going to have the T here. And when they don’t, they are extremely unlikely to draw the T *next* turn, giving you additional time to fish for a devastating (and basically game ending) fishing play.

Even if they draw the T or have the T, a lot of times they are relegated to a low scoring blocking play, and if you get FJELDS/FJORDS at b1, that’s a perfectly good tradeoff for you. While it’s obvious that your opponent can block with the T, a lot of people assume that they can block well, but it’s hard to make a 5 letter play starting with T. In addition, sometimes they will have to sacrifice major points to block this setup, or might ignore it entirely because of either a high scoring play or bingo elsewhere on the board. And your opponent has no reason to do something like play 5 tiles or exchange 7 tiles to hope to draw the T, assuming they don’t have it: from their perspective, you probably have the F play already.

Next turn you will often get to play 2 tiles, or maybe even 3 (and commit to picking FJELD or FJORD, probably FJELD) and if you miss, you get to fish again. Even after just dumping OF, you’ll get to hit FJORD/FJELD over half of the time due to this recursive threat, making you a huge favorite over your opponent.

Recursion is an extremely powerful tool, and while it does not show up very often, it has to be respected. When someone has a recursive threat, it has to be taken care of immediately and urgently. Even if he didn’t have the D (and the D were still in the bag), without the T blocking OF-F, FJELD/FJORD would probably come down eventually. Letting recursion go is a disaster.

We’ve now established that OF is a strong play: however, there are other options. Even ROW 6l is an option, as it scores okay and preserves the same setup possibility with a higher valuation, although the setup option is blocked too often to make it quite worthwhile. REF 14i does something very similar, setting up a diversion T-REF hook, and gunning specifically for FJELD. (Since you’re drawing two tiles and there are more Es out, you are more likely to hit this fish.)

While this is a slightly stronger version than the OF version, this is still essentially the same play with a few additional downsides to compensate for the additional odds of hitting FJELD: your opponent now might have a 15d play that scores well, or a T play like LUXATE that completely neutralizes FJELD even when you do hit it.

In addition, most top players (though not everyone) should sniff this out and block accordingly with the T. This is a really bad diversion: it doesn’t make sense on any level to be anything but a strong F setup where you’re willing to give your opponent a 40+ point play for free. Your rack is still fairly face up: you have to have the F, and it probably will be blocked. (Or you have the T, in which case your opponent is going to block T-REF, but they will score decently doing so.)

It’s the only thing that makes any sense at all, especially coming from a top player, and its results are potentially devastating and recursive. If they play the T, you’re going to get that F play eventually, and it will probably hit very hard. If they have EORTV, they are going to play TROVE for 33 and block the F rather than play VOTE for 40, and often they’ll even just make a blocking play (either a cheap 5 starting with T or even a shorter play) since any competent player who is capable of range-finding can figure out your approximate range fairly easily.

Of course, there is another option that is less transparent: WO 14b (10). This is far less transparent, as there is nothing being set up and it’s just not obvious what you are doing. This very obviously looks like a T setup, and your opponent in this case should (and will) broadcast whether or not they have the T, as they simply can’t leave it alone without having the T in their rack. If they don’t have the T, they will block since there are too many major threats with the T to leave it open.

While WO might bait out the T more often than REF, it won’t do it a heck of a lot, because again, we run into the same problem: it looks like a bait. There’s simply no reason for your opponent to ever spend the T because of recursion, and when it looks like a bait and you can use the T on a future turn, there’s no reason to spent the T unless you have a huge play (like LUXATE or a bingo). Even though your opponent won’t likely figure out what you are up to, elite opponents are still unlikely to use the T.

The problem with this option, again, is when they do have the T, because in this case, your opponent ALSO has recursion! This means that there is no reason whatsoever to spend the T for several reasons. The first reason is that there’s no where to go but up: no one is going to make a T setup only to block it next turn when it goes unused, as that makes little to no sense. The second reason is that it looks somewhat like a bait to draw out the T so that something can be set up, either as a bingo line or a scoring line (in this case, OF). Thus, your opponent should usually play elsewhere, and then you ultimately make the play that opens the F spot, your opponent should be able to still sniff it out and block accordingly.

The irony of this play is that both REF 14i and WO 14b should never (or almost never) flush out the T in the way you want. The same concept (recursion) that makes the setup viable also helps your opponent immensely. The strength of these plays relies entirely on how often the T is drawn out: even some top players will play the T too often, as illustrated in the previous positions. WO is more likely to work than REF in practice, but against players who truly save the T frequently enough, the correct option is to play REF or OF immediately.

Given this analysis, you might be wondering “What can I take away from all of this?” From this, I’ll list off the main points that I think are most important.

1. Recursion is important, and it is brutal. You can keep fishing for FJELD/FJORD if you aren’t there yet, while your opponent can fish and preserve the T endlessly and hit you pretty brutally in the meantime, since they only have to save one tile while you have to save 5.

2. Top, elite players are always thinking something, and even if you don’t get what they are thinking, you should take measures to protect yourself against their ploys and tactics. If a top player makes a play for a weird reason, you should think about the motivations even if it’s not clear and you can’t deduce those motivations definitively or immediately. Yes, if you’re well respected and at their level, you might get mind-gamed, but this is more the exception and not the rule.

3. Even very good players are not going to react to situations perfectly, especially if they are unusual and don’t fit the current equity paradigm. Computers are far away from appreciating WO as an option here even though it’s a good option, and even a lot of very strong players don’t understand the options well when they don’t fit the typical equity paradigm. Concepts such as recursion (and there are many other concepts that are like this, and this is not anomalous: positions that clearly break the equity paradigm happen all the time) are often foreign to even some of the highest rated players since there are many unique positions in Scrabble that are not best explained through the current equity/valuation paradigm.

Post #1:

So the previous positions have been more complicated, and I want to start doing simpler positions that are more accessible to more players, while still illustrating useful Scrabble concepts. The next few positions are going to be a bit more basic: they will be positions with a clear best play, but still not so obvious that I think everyone will make the correct decision.Find the best play!

From this position, there are really only 4 choices: WAN, AWN, NAW, and WEAN.

Before we examine these options, as always it’s useful to note the other factors: the score (0-24, not really a factor) and his range. Your opponent’s range after AZO is fairly strong, likely containing an N, often containing an A, and containing more ?/S than random. They are fairly unlikely to have an E, as well as many clunky tiles (C, G, P, X, etc. are unlikely)

AWN and NAW are very similar plays. Both close the board about equally well, while AWN scores two point less but creates a slightly better board because of your S hook. It’s really a tossup between these plays.

WAN looks good because of the NE possibility, but this possibility isn’t nearly as good as it first appears. First of all, your opponent is likely to have an N themselves, and while they don’t have an E, they might draw one, or have a D/S/T already or could draw one next turn. Even if they don’t, your opponent will sometimes have a G/P/X/S to underlap WAN, substantially weakening the utility of that hook. WAN does open some possibilities for you, but it also opens possibilities for your opponent that hits their likely range fairly hard. The openings are better for your opponent than they are for you.

However, the strongest play is WEAN, scoring two more points than NAW/WAN and severely limiting your opponent’s scoring options since they can no longer underlap WEAN as easily. Computer analysis shows that WEAN decreases the opponent’s score by 4 points more than AWN/NAW and 7 points more than WEAN. While the E is a welcomed addition to ANS, it’s not nearly as significant as the superior defense and 2 additional points.

Post #2

This is somewhat strategically related (though not really) to the series of prior positions. Unlike the last position, this is actually a position or concept that happens frequently that I’ve seen a lot of people mess up countless times. Can you spot the best play?

In this position, its essential to realize the primary existential threat to your lead: bingos. You’re up by 44 and turn: it’s going to be hard for your opponent to outrun you by simply scoring, as there really aren’t all that many scoring options possible. Quackle simulation shows that the average score is 20 points with a standard deviation of about 12, indicating that a 44 point lead + turn is quite safe in terms of this position’s future scoring potential.
The major existential threat to your lead is bingos: fortunately, you’re on a board where it is difficult to bingo. Unfortunately, it is also very easy for your opponent to create bingos and bingo lines.
One approach is to outrun these potential bingos. A play like KERNEL/KERNED, RELENT or RETTED scores decently and plays off bad tiles on this board (since the bingo prospects are so bad, tiles like E, N, T, etc. drop in value considerably) in hopes of drawing good tiles (such as the S, H, and Q). Another option is to play TAEL (which sets up the S, but the S is going to score anyway, and can be blocked by row 13 parallels: you can also play the row 13 parallel like NE first to “protect” TAEL).
There are two spots to create bingo lines: one in bottom left quadrant, but more noticeably, bingo line hooks can be created at n5 with plays such as PARE, TARE, HARE, and especially CARE/CRAM. These threats are not only immediate: they are recurring, and your opponent can (and often should) make these plays even without the S in hand, and are very difficult to stop in general. For this reason, a reasonable option is playing TRAM immediately for 6 points, blocking the potential S setup immediately.
But for this same reason, the D is a quite useful tile because of the five letter word DIRAM. This allows you to block many of those setups (all of them except CARE), and prevents a recursive bingo line that can easily overcome your lead. For this reason, the D is a very useful tile to keep: enough so that RELENT becomes a better play than RETTED, and KERNEL is a better play than KERNED.
While KERNEL scores more points, it is also less flexible, keeping 3 consonants and two Ts (with 3 Ts unseen). Thus, RELENT has a higher valuation. Similarly, when you compare RELENT and TAEL, both have a nearly equivalent leave (DT is a trifle better than DENT, but not much) but the VINYLS hook is a slight negative since it introduces an outscoring threat (VINYLS isn’t a threat immediately, but after the CARE/TARE setup, it could easily become one with some other scoring tiles). I slightly prefer RELENT.
Really though, it just comes down to the fact that we’re going to have to deal with the n5 setups eventually, and we’re going to have to sacrifice points to do so: even if our opponent makes a 25 point play next turn, that setup is still going to be a priority for turn after turn after turn, and there’s never going to be a good option to block it. Your opponent will almost always make this setup in future turns and you’re going to need to block it. For this reason, it’s best to stop this setup in its tracks and block it immediately by playing TRAM to preemptively kill the potential open flower that will be very difficult to stop.

Post #3:

With this rack, there are only 4 real options: VIE 8g, AVE 8h, VITAE, and -E.

The first comparison that we should make is between VIE and AVE. Both plays imply very strong leaves, which are likely to induce closed board responses from a strong opponent assuming that they don’t have a strong rack. VIE will often prompt plays through the E or preceding the I and E, while AVE is harder to block, although it can still be blocked with G-AVE or E-AVE (if they have those tiles). (AVE 8f can be considered as well, but it gives your opponent a lot better scoring and lowers the score of your bingos dramatically, even though it results in more playable bingos on future turns.)
This factor decreases the worth of both leaves, but has a greater effect on VIE. While the leave in somewhat stronger after VIE, AVE will result in a more bingo friendly board for your range, making it a slightly stronger play even though it retains a slightly worse leave.
-E might initially seem good until you realize that bingos occur somewhat rarely. Less than 1/3 of the bag will result in a 7 letter word, and many times a good opponent will not give you letters to play an 8 letter word (or play anything at all) or play a word that will make some of your 7s unplayable. AVE results in nearly as many bingos as -E while also scoring 12 points, making AVE a stronger play than -E.
Finally, we must compare VITAE and AVE. VITAE scores 24 and keeps ER (which is worth about 5) but does also give your opponent options in the form of increased parallels and bingo potential. From a valuation standpoint, it’s pretty easy to peg VITAE right around 27, which means AVE has to get there, and honestly, it’s hard to see how AVE gets there. EIRT isn’t worth 15 in a standard situation, and given that your opponent has a very firm grasp of your range after AVE and that many racks can result in blockier plays, it’s difficult to see how EIRT can make up the 15 points, especially since the rack can turn problematic on future turns when it fails to bingo in the immediate future.

I do feel as though it’s important to note what can be learned from this rack in general. I hope that readers come away with two important themes from this rack and racks like this in general:
1. Racks that are near a bingo (that don’t contain an S) are not very good opening racks in general. When you end up fishing, a good opponent is going to be able to put you on a range and play very well against that range, not just next turn, but often on future turns. We’re often trained that the objective of Scrabble is to bingo, but when you fish with AAEILNT or AEEGINT, you’re not doing it because “you’re excited and you almost have a bingo”, you’re mostly doing it because there really aren’t any reasonable alternatives. At the end of the day if you can get out of these racks by either scoring 30+ points or scoring 20+ and keeping a decent leave rather than 10 points and a very good leave, you’re actually often better off scoring unless the board is extremely conducive to bingos, especially against good opponents who are capable of leave inference.
2. Opening racks in general are actually better thought of as closed board situations that are very permutation-heavy. A lot of times on opening racks the board will be empty or near empty and there won’t be a ton of room to play bingos etc. in the immediate future. A big problem with this rack specifically is that VIE isn’t parallel-able and AVE is hurt because of the front-hooks that kill AVE-R: without both of these factors, AVE and VIE become viable and are quite possibly the best play. A similar rack like AEEHIRT is actually a lot more viable in this case, since HIE/HAE make it much more difficult for your opponent to close bingo lines profitably since there are no hooks or parallels that severely hamper the board for bingos next turn.

One of the most common misnomers of CSW is that it only consists of ridiculous words that have no basis in any native English speaker’s vocabulary. While there are certainly many words in CSW that are very obscure (and perhaps CSW needs a purge), there are also a significant number of words that I think are also quite intuitive.

Here’s a list that I made below (with the help of the Scrabble community)

Anagrams

Anagrams is a word-finding game using two or more sets of Scrabble tiles. In anagrams, you can do either two things: Grab a 7+ letter word using the pool of tiles in the middle, or steal an already existing word using the tiles remaining in the pool.

For example, if EHIMORSVZ is in the pool, someone could form the word HEROISM. The pool would then become VZ. If the next tiles are I and P, someone could steal HEROISM with IMPOVERISH, leaving a Z in the pool.

With the blanks, you can either form a 9+ letter word in the pool, or steal but also using at least 2 other tiles in the pool. Thus, to steal a 7 letter word using a blank, the steal must be at least 10 letters long.

Clabbers

Clabbers is Scrabble with one basic rule change: any word that is an anagram of a valid word is also playable! For example, not only is the word FUN valid, but so is FNU, UFN, UNF, NFU, and NUF! This allows for many more overlaps, extensions, bingos, and significantly higher scores as you get to play long words with ease and show off your word-finding ability!

Phoneyz

Rather than a competitive game, Phoneyz is a somewhat cooperative game where the objective is to play the raunchiest or most hilarious “words” imaginable that you can find. (Phoneyz is generally not a competitive game: dictionaries are not used.) An additional rule is that any blank on the board can be replaced by the letter it is designated for, allowing for an infinite number of turns where blanks can be used in one’s rack.

Players can also add strip variants or other variants to this game, adding instructions (i.e. take off a piece of clothing whenever someone plays anything alluding to stripping)

Strip Scrabble

2-player

Each player starts with only 6 articles of clothing of their choice. (One game of Scrabble would be about 6 articles of clothing. Plan accordingly: multiple games are optional!)

Phoneyz lexicon preferred (no dictionary), playful words desired

For every 100 points, the opposing player strips.

Each person must take off a piece of clothing when opposing player plays a word below. Words can only be added once the game starts. Once a word is played, it cannot be used again.

Hey guys! For those of you interested in following, I’ve decided to make a brief description of the players to watch in this year’s National Scrabble Championship. Enjoy!

Favorites:

David Gibson

Probably the consensus favorite to win the tournament, with the highest rating and most experience out of anyone in big events. Many of the top players in this event have limited experience dealing with Gibson’s unique style, and he has unprecedented results against the 1800-1900 range, which consist of the majority of this field.

Question Marks: Can he adapt to players who have seen his style through annotation? Can he hold it together at the end of the tournament?

Will Anderson

My pick to win the tournament. Ranked #2, with excellent results at the last three Nationals, and probably the most technically sound player in the tournament. Will is able to play a multitude of styles, has a good matchup with every player in the field, and has been the most consistent player over the last few years.

Question Marks: Hasn’t been playing a lot lately. Doesn’t have the name recognition as some other top players, and as such might not incite the same number of mistakes as other top players.

Mack Meller

Probably the sentimental favorite to win the tournament, as Mack’s not even in college yet, and many of us remember Mack from his days as an innocent School Scrabble player. Likely the best word knowledge in the entire tournament and the highest ISC rating, Mack’s fast speed and extremely aggressive play style combine with his youth and stamina will make him a force to be reckoned with.

Question Marks: Expectations for Mack have never been higher, as this is the first Nationals he’s been considered a sizable favorite, as well as likely the crowd favorite. How will he deal with the pressure?

Strong contenders:

Matthew Tunnicliffe

The defending National Champion. Enough said. Can he repeat?

Jesse Day

Jesse burst onto the scene about 5 years ago, having one of the sickest years ever recorded in Scrabble history. Since then, he has finished in the top 10 in the last 5 straight Nationals and a runner-up last year, Jesse Day has to be considered a major contender for any Nationals he enters. But with Kings Cup a month prior and Lille looming, is he focused on the American lexicon?

Rafi Stern

Rafi hasn’t played many tournaments as of late, instead choosing to devote more of his game-playing efforts towards poker. When Rafi’s on point, he’s one of the strongest and scariest players in the field, and can go an entire day without making major errors. Rafi has an extremely strong technical understanding of Scrabble, capable of playing various styles and adjusting his style based on the situation.

Orry Swift

While he might not have the same name recognition, Orry has been recently trying to rededicate himself to Scrabble, and has one of the most strategic and analytical minds in the game, with the ability to be a winning player at games such as poker and Magic in addition to Scrabble. Even though he has some tough matchups, he still has some of the best results of any player in the field.

Joel Sherman

Infamous for his depiction in the hit book Word Freak, the former National Champion has a setup-heavy style that plays well in the current metagame, and has been in strong contention for most of the recent Nationals. Can he finally break through?

Joey Krafchick

Currently the 4th seed, having won 14 tournaments in the last year. His fast, aggressive style makes him extremely difficult to deal with, and he tends to cram studying in before Nationals. Can he manage to overcome his head-to-head struggles against other, tactical top players?

Jason Li

Jason’s probably the most unknown of the contenders who can win Nationals, making him a likely candidate to sneak up out of nowhere, although he was in strong contention at Buffalo in 2014. Perhaps one of the most analytical players out there. Can he finally break through and win in a major Division 1 field?

Scott Appel:

After a few year slump, Scott’s finally starting to regain his form with a strong performance in Atlanta, not to mention numerous BAT premiers and four top 10s at prior Nationals. While he doesn’t have the name recognition or overwhelming personality of the other top players, he’s still a major threat to win.

Joe Edley

By far the most decorated Nationals player in the field, with 3 titles and many other 2nd and 3rd place finishes, not to mention countless other tournaments and over $100,000 in career earnings. While he finished 6th last year, he hasn’t finished in the top 10 before then since 2005. Does he still have what it takes to win?

Panupol Sujjayakorn

A strong Thai player with amazing fundamentals, Panupol finished 4th at last year’s Nationals, not to mention having a 2-0 lead in the 2005 best of 5 Nationals against eventual champion Dave Wiegand and a World Scrabble Championship title. Could a Thai finally win a Nationals?

Absurd. Ludicrous. Crazy. These are adjectives often used to describe the obscure vagaries in Scrabble’s dictionary. “That can’t possibly be a word!” is a mantra for many new Scrabble players, and, like it or not, some words make it into the Scrabble dictionary that simply don’t belong. While some long words (like BASEMENTLESS, NONHOMOSEXUAL, and COUNTERWORLD) will never show up, many of these words are short enough that they can certainly show up during a game of Scrabble. Here are 100 (non)words that made it into both the American and International dictionaries:

Many players have asked: What dictionary I can play? The answer is as simply as geography.

If you live in the US, Canada, Israel, or Thailand, you should play with OWL. OWL is a smaller, restricted list that focuses on American English. The dictionary is more provincial, and as such rarely includes entries such as Maori, German, or Indian rooted words, and is often viewed as a more intuitive dictionary.

If you like in any other country (including the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria, and others) you should play with the CSW dictionary. The CSW dictionary includes many obscure words (such as EUOUAE, YDRAD, and VOZHD, but also contains common immigrant words from other languages (such as CHIHUAHUA DUBSTEP, and NIGIRI) as well as other common words that are inexplicably not in the American dictionary, such as RAINFOREST, SEEDINGS, REFOREST, and IMMERSIVE.

Despite the obvious similarities between Words with Friends and Scrabble, there are some key differences. Bingos are only worth 35 points. The tile distribution and point values are slightly different. Phoneys are no longer an option. Tournaments don’t exist for WWF (yet). And the board is somewhat different. This results in some key notable strategic differences between the two games:

• Consonants used for bingos are less useful in Words with Friends. They are still okay tiles because they allow you to use higher scoring consonants in conjunction with each other, but they are still slightly below average.

• Fishing (the act of playing or exchanging one or two tiles in hopes of a bingo) is nearly non-existent in Words With Friends. Since bingos score less, and scoring plays score more, there is rarely a purpose of fishing. Making any extra effort trying to play a bingo is often fruitless.

• While it is harder to build a lead in Words With Friends, it is also harder to make up a deficit. Scores do not vary nearly as widely because of the increased scoring bonuses and decreased bingo bonuses available.

• Setups are more valuable in Words with Friends

• Opening the board leads to higher scoring plays in Words With Friends, due to the board configuration and slightly higher point values of various tiles.

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